In earthquake sensitive regions, buildings are often designed and constructed to withstand earthquake movements or to reduce the damage to their structural construction caused by such earthquake movements. Earthquake movements typically induce horizontal and vertical movements and come in waves.
Whereas a lot of attention has been given to design and construction of the outside structure of buildings, also the inner walls typically get damaged during earthquakes.
Inner walls typically may be constructed as plasterboard partition walls, which are built using a sub-structure made of e.g. wood or metal studs, on which plasterboards are mounted. During an earthquake these board partition walls can collapse or break due to forces on the plasterboard partition walls. More particularly, movements of the building during an earthquake typically may induce deformation of the sub-structure of the partition wall, resulting in damage to both the plasterboard wall as well as to the underlying sub-structure.
Japanese utility model application JPH061520 describes one solution for reducing damage to a partition by adjusting the connection of the partition with other walls that induce stress on the partition during earthquakes. The connection is made using a linking device having an accordion-like structure allowing relative movement between the inner walls. In some particular embodiments, the linking device may be an attachment/detachment device that links the walls but that can be released when a predetermined force or larger is applied, e.g. during an earthquake. The linking device might for example be a door that is kept close using magnets and that opens when a too large force is applied. Such a system is also known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,430,884, which describes an automatically closing cover panel for a seismic expansion joint. However, such systems require the presence of a relatively wide expansion joint in the board partition, which is not always desirable.
Another solution is to construct the board partition structure freely from the remaining building structure, i.e. by leaving gaps between the partition structure and the remaining building structure. The space (deflection gap) between both typically then is filled with a flexible joint. This method works well for small partitions, but if the movements of the building surpass the space filled with the flexible joints, the partition structure will eventually break.